9/04/2017

Lyric Stage's "Gypsy": How Gypsy Rose

Leigh Barrett in "Gypsy"(photo: Mark S. Howard)

In Stephen Sondheim's memoir Finishing the Hat:
Collected Lyrics 1954-1981 with Attendant Comments, Principles,
Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, he describes Gypsy Rose
Lee as “the burlesque queen who put the 'tease' into striptease”;
no one could put it better. She is the title role (but not the
central character) in the musical Gypsy, based on the memoirs
of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee (born “Louise”) and her relationship
with her mother Rose. It's the season opener for Lyric Stage Company
(which will also present Sondheim's most recent work, Road Show,
this coming January). Gypsy is accurately described by
Sondheim as his first opportunity to write lyrics for characters of
considerable complexity. The show's Book by Arthur Laurents and Music
by Jule Styne portray a protagonist who is profoundly self-deluded, a
real challenge for an actor as an instrument to convey considerable
dramatic subtext. When it premiered in 1959, it was immediately and
universally recognized as a watershed work, ran for over 700
performances and received 9 Tony Award nominations, though it didn't
win any (it was the year of Fiorello! and The
Sound of Music). Apart from providing many a female star
in subsequent revivals with a terrific chance to shine, (such as
Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly and Patti LuPone, all Tony winners for the
role), it established itself in the eyes and ears of numerous scribes
as the nearly perfect piece of musical theater.

What it's not, at least for the most part, is a musical
comedy. Though it has quite a few funny lines and a couple of comic
numbers, it remains at heart (and it has a lot of that beneath its
true grit) a tragic story of wishes unfulfilled on the part of Mama,
“Madame Rose” (Leigh Barrett), who wants desperately to create
the success for her offspring, first her daughter June (Kira Troilo)
then her other daughter Louise (Kirsten Salpini), that she herself
never had as a performer. The other main character is Herbie (Steven
Barkhimer), in love with Rose but not with the theater, a former
talent agent turned candy salesman. As Ethan Mordden observed in his
book on musicals of the 1950's, Coming Up Roses, this
dysfunctional family of stage mother, favorite daughter and unloved
daughter, along with the ever-faithful Herbie, is surely atypical for
a musical at that time. There are a few memorable turns such as the
inspired dance number by Tulsa (Brady Miller), the chorus boy with
his own dreams, and the comic highpoint,You Gotta Have a Gimmick,
a lesson given by three strippers to the innocent Louise, here
delivered by Mazeppa (Kathy St. George, who explains she “bumps it
with a trumpet”), Electra (Jordan Clark, who maintains “if you
wanna make it, twinkle while you shake it”, though Sondheim
preferred, but was overruled, the line “shake it till you break
it”), and Tessie Tura (Shannon Lee Jones, whose stripper name is an
outrageously clever musical pun). The creative team includes
excellent Music Direction by Dan Rodriguez, fluid Scenic Design by
Janie E. Howland (using vaudeville billing cards to denote changes of
place and time, notably the reference to Omaha as terminal), and fine
period Costume Design by Rafael Jaen, as well as crucial Lighting
Design by Franklin Meissner, Jr. and Sound Design by Andrew Duncan
Will. The entire production was Directed and Choreographed by Rachel
Bertone (on a par with her wonderful work last season for Moonbox
Productions' Barnum), whose dance experience greatly enhances
the movement of the show, beginning with her brilliant accompaniment
to the wondrous overture (not to be revealed here). As Electra might
put it, she does it with a switch.

The score ranges from the hope-in-denial anthem
Everything's Coming Up Roses to the plaintive ballad Small
World and the jaunty Together Wherever We Go as well as
the various versions of May We/Let Me Entertain You, first
sung by successive children's choruses, inventively altered for a
grown-up version. The “eleven o'clock number”, Rose's Turn,
is still stunning theater no matter how often you've heard it before.
Jule Styne was never better, and the growing prowess of Sondheim was,
and remains, striking (especially in such internal rhymes as
“egos”/”amigos”). About the only, and relatively minor, flaw
in the work is the frequency of various permutations of Baby/Dainty June and Her Newsboys/Farmboys/Toreadorables. While it helps convey the passage of time and the increasing
hopelessness of the family's rise and fall, the authors go to that
well once too often.

That's a small price to pay, though, for experiencing a
really great show with a truly great cast.

Madame Rose is arguably the finest female musical role
ever written, and this is Leigh's Turn; Barrett's is a performance
that sings out for superlatives, a towering apex to a career filled
with memorable turns. Was there ever a more chilling entrance than
her command to “sing out Louise”? Her Rose (monstrous though the
character is), coupled with the initially timorous twosome of the
untalented Louise and the human doormat that is Herbie, all somehow
manage to make us root for them against all odds, and despite their
flaws. Was there ever such a trio of difficult and demanding roles?
And all three nail them. As musicals go, this is a keeper, one which
bills itself as “a musical fable”. At one point, Rose proclaims
that everyone needs something impossible to hope for, even as the
moral of the fable might be resisting how a mother's drive can
threaten to destroy her brood, virtually eating her young.

So one piece of advice: between now and October 8th,
by all means go, and let them entertain you!